I ruined several evenings for my friend with this text about panic attacks. And one night by myself.
– How do you know that all this is real and not an illusion? – I glanced at the roadside cafe in the middle of green fields where we stopped for lunch.
My friend chewed thoughtfully, and after some time said: “I really like this sausage – he poked it with a fork – and even if it seems to me, I don’t mind staying in this illusion. It was not easy to describe my condition. It was even more difficult to explain what I needed from him because of this.
How they are worried
I experienced panic attacks. In short, it is an attack of unexpected and inexplicable terror. I suddenly began to be afraid of something that I had never been afraid of before: sleeping, going crazy, doing something terrible and irreversible. For example, go out the window and become disabled. I was afraid of harming loved ones. I was afraid to be alone. I was afraid of being stuck between a dream and reality. Because during these attacks, the world suddenly seems to thin out, becomes shaky, and it terrifies even more. I was not even afraid of death as much as life in such a state. I called it “flicker” – as if the world starts to shake a little. Often I could notice it until the attack. For example, after the hands or feet started to go numb. Or I wanted to sleep, but I did not fall asleep, but plunged into a trance, from which I jumped out in a panic as if scalded.
When I think about it, the words of Yehor Letov come to mind: “When I died, there was no one who would refute it”
🌵Unsuccessful combination
Where do panic attacks, anxiety disorders and various psychotic episodes come from, when they are not related to a psychiatric diagnosis? Simply put, one thing is needed – an unsuccessful combination of childhood trauma with careless passage of a personal crisis in adulthood to fail, hang up, make a mistake – refuse to serve the master in any way. And as if asking: “Turn it off for a while, let me rest, otherwise I’ll be covered.”
Some people obey this voice the first time. And for others, it is necessary to regain consciousness in the hospital in order for this to happen. Everyone I’ve worked with and whose stories I know definitely had what can now be classified as one of the types of panic attacks as a child. Someone is afraid to die, someone to go crazy, someone to reveal some secret, etc.
One of my acquaintances, who experienced panic attacks, spent a long time trying to understand where they came from. Remembering his childhood, he found out that he did not have a single person with whom he was humanly close. It was as if he lived in isolation, although he lived in a formally complete family – with parents, grandparents. My father often scolded me when I was a child, saying, “all children are like children, but I’m a poor one.” I remembered this as an adult, when I was already working as a psychotherapist.
Analyzing the circumstances under which I ended up in a state of panic, I realized that it happened after a long forced communication with a person with whom we did not understand each other. As if we, looking at the same thing, see it completely opposite. And it wouldn’t matter if I was equal. But I was lower in the hierarchy. And my childhood trauma played a role: if I and an older person see something differently, it means that I am not normal. There is also a cumulative effect. As a result, with a fear of heights and speed, I rode on all the crazy attractions that I met in the world, jumped on a rope from bridges, went water skiing, lashing, snowboarding, even windsurfing more or less mastered. All this time I did not feel pleasure, but horror. Which, as it turned out, accumulates in the body in the form of constant production of cortisol or adrenaline.
What shall I do
Those who have experienced panic attacks quickly learn to live with them. Someone runs around the room, someone cries, someone calls their friends, someone tries to breathe evenly and deeply, someone tries to somehow ground themselves. But I realized that at such moments there is no point in focusing on my body – it does not belong to me at this moment. It is temporarily owned by Madame Panic. At this moment, it is impossible to even remember that all this is temporary, because the sense of time disappears.
🌵Why are they?
Panic attacks have a philosophical meaning. They signal to a person: some kind of change has already happened to him. And he has to accept it. But since he does not realize this yet, he tries to live in the old way – as if nothing has changed. The body tries to live in a new way, and the inert psyche resists. This conflict causes failure. It is impossible to ignore it. Therefore, you will have to make a choice – live the old way or change your life – sooner or later. And earlier is better. Otherwise, you will have to continue to control yourself and the life around you. But it is impossible to control it. And it is impossible to be sure that you will never die or go crazy. If you constantly concentrate on this control, you cannot relax. Never. Because no matter how well things go, things can always change. And vice versa. And if right now I am satisfied with the picture of the green fields around and this friend is digging into an anchovies, then you can try to enjoy it. Because if I dream of this whole world in too much real, but illusions, right now I’m terribly lucky.
